Folks love standards, mostly because we love to compare ourselves to other people and see where we lie on the continuum. It validates us. It gives our ego this little tiny boost that makes us feel good for a minute.

And usually, I’d write a post telling you to forget about standards. Forget what other people are doing. Get off of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Stop watching other people live life and giving yourself massive FOMO while you sit on your couch with re-runs of The Office in the background.

But I think standards can be helpful now and then. They give us metrics to compare ourselves to ourselves, to see how we’re doing. We can pit our strengths against our weaknesses and uncover the areas of our health & fitness that we need to work on.

If you quickly Google the word “toning,” the first page of search results is a mishmash of both pro-toning and anti-toning blog posts. The fitness world loves the word toning. It’s schismatic (how’s that for SAT vocab?) and makes for good blog content. Heck, isn’t that why you clicked on this post in the first place?

And I have a confession: for a while, I was a fitness purist.

I believed that, whenever somebody came to me looking to “tone up,” it was my job to correct them. I needed to explain to them that toning is a myth and that muscles only get bigger or smaller and that bodyfat is what really matters. Then I’d dive into a quick soliloquy (I’m crushing the SAT words today) about rep ranges, percentages, and how we were going to program so that they got exactly where they wanted to be.

But at the end of the day, they just didn’t want the “stuff” on the underside of their arm to jiggle as much.

I read something good on Instagram the other day, it was from a fellow gym-owner, “How might you feel if you say ‘It’s not a priority’ instead of ‘I don’t have time?'” When it comes to programming, it’s important to remember that exercise isn’t always or top priority. But we can still achieve an amazing level of fitness by making a few small adjustments.

Making our own health and wellness a priority can be difficult. I’m not sure if it’s the natural human instinct to care for others first, but between work, marriage, kids, and weekend trips to Home Depot, finding time for exercise is tough.

So it’s crucial to make the most of your hours at the gym. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 hours or 20 hours, making the right choices when it comes to programming can be the difference between progress and stagnation.

Rules make things clear. For instance, the NFL’s Catch vs. No-catch Rule has made it super quick and easy to figure out whether a receiver legitimately caught the football (note the subtle sarcastic undertones).

Rules prevent society from breaking out into anarchy. They prevent people from just walking into convenience stores at their leisure and taking whatever items they want. (I’m looking at you, Philadelphia.)

And when it comes to training, rules help guide us in our decision-making.

So without further adieu, I’d like to introduce you to the Three P’s of Exercise Selection.

These rules help guide us in choosing exercises for both ourselves and our members. They help us prioritize what is important during a workout as we make adjustments. Most importantly, they help create consistency in our process.

To be honest, I don’t get this question very often. I think that, for the most part, crunches have found their way out of current “mainstream” fitness. This is probably because modern fitness is dominated by extreme classes, Instagram experts, and multi-level protein shake marketing. There’s just too much other noise out there.

But I did get this question today, so let’s dive in.

Crunches and sit-ups are both exercise variations used to strengthen the abdominals. Specifically, we’re talking mostly about the “six-pack” abs, the ones that you can see on the outside. (This layer of muscle is called your rectus abdominis.)

These exercises are great when it comes to strengthening the six-pack abs through contraction and hypertrophying the abdominals so that they “pop” when your bodyfat is low enough. Additionally, they can be performed in a variety of positions and on an assortment of machines. They’re even used by popular competitive fitness outlets as parts of workouts.

So why have we chosen to disregard such popular exercises in favor of planks and deadbugs? Let me explain.

When I first sat down to write the first part of this series about exercise programs and workouts, I didn’t really imagine that I’d have two blog posts worth of ideas. But now here we are.

I think sometimes I program better for my own clients than I do for myself.

I keep things simple, don’t mess around with rep ranges too much, and assign exercises that I know they’ll perform successfully. This seems to yield a steady stream of PRs and positivity.

If you’re looking for the exact blueprint, I don’t have it. (I mean, I sort of do, but it varies widely from person to person.) Programming is both an art and a science: you must make evidence-based decisions while creating a beautiful masterpiece of assorted equipment and movement variation.

It’s like writing a song: you can pretty much do whatever you want, but you still need to use scales and notes and stuff.

And so here I am, again ready to dispense the secrets that help our members experience success. I hope that these concepts work as well for you and your members as they’ve worked for us.

I was skeptical at first. I downloaded the book at 6:15 in the morning in the middle of a group session so that we could have a team discussion about the contents.

We’d heard all the speculation:

“Tom Brady doesn’t eat tomatoes.”

“Tom Brady’s kids only eat sushi.”

“Tom Brady only works on his flexibility with bands.”

Announcers, radio talk show hosts, the internet – everyone was trying to make heads or tails of Tom Brady’s training regimen before this book came out. And when the rumors are basically being crowd-sourced by a gaggle of non-fitness professionals, things start to sound a little bit weird.

So, thank God this book came out. Although Tom might be a partial frontman for what seems to be, at times, Alex’s thoughts, the book is great.